It is well-known that Henry II, king of England, duke of Normandy and Aquitaine and count of Anjou, added the duchy of Brittany to the ‘Angevin empire’ and granted it to his third son, Geoffrey. As the necessary background to the conflict between the young Arthur of Brittany, Geoffrey's posthumous son, and his uncle King John over the succession to Richard the Lionheart, this is about as much as British historians have felt they needed to know about Brittany in the twelfth century.

The history of the Angevin regime in Brittany has received only scant attention from historians. This neglect has two causes; firstly, the relative scarcity of contemporary sources, which makes the history of Brittany in this period quite obscure, and secondly, the sentiments of historians. Both British and French historians tend to overlook Brittany as peripheral, backward, and, because of its Celtic history, different and atypical. Whether the subject is the Anglo-Norman realm, the Angevin empire or the Capetian monarchy, Brittany appears marginal, both geographically and culturally.

Breton historians, for their part, have tended to avoid the period of Angevin rule, passing over it as a shameful episode of foreign, and worse, ‘English’, domination best overlooked. When the topic cannot be avoided, they have tended to emphasise baronial rebellion against Henry II, characterising it as the heroic resistance of Breton patriots.